Mobile World Congress Wrap-Up

Mobile World Congress Wrap-Up

The Future of the Mobile Enterprise

The Edge of Innovation

Mobile World Congress (MWC) continues to grow and rival the likes of the Consumer Electronics Show. This year was no exception as over 93,000 attendees, 3800 members of the media and industry analysts and over 2000 exhibitors converged on Barcelona for the annual event.

Mobile World Congress has become the showcase for Smartphone and Tablet manufacturers to launch their latest and greatest innovations. Samsung and HTC garnered much of the attention with the launches of their flagship Smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S6 / Galaxy S6 Edge and the HTC M9. While Microsoft, LG, Nokia and Blackberry introduced new mid-range Smartphones.

Here are the notable new Smartphones announced at MWC 2015:

Samsung Galaxy S6

Elimination of the Micro SD slot offset by an increase in onboard memory up to 128 GB

An incredibly sharp QHD 577 ppi display

64 bit, Octa-Core Processor

Android Lollipop 5.0 OS

Winner of a Top Tech award at MWC

HTC M9

32 GB of storage, expandable up to an additional 128 GB through the Micro SD slot

1920×1080 resolution display

64 bit, Octa-Core Processor

Android Lollipop 5.0 OS

We anticipate big announcements regarding higher performance Lumia Smartphones later this year from Microsoft as we near the launch of Windows 10.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

The mobile enterprise will continue to benefit from the highly competitive Smartphone market and manufacturers’ quest to win the greatest share of this growth market that saw over 1.3 billion units shipped worldwide in 2014. The latest Smartphones come equipped with more powerful processors, better cameras, high resolution displays and more storage. Best-in-class enterprises are taking advantage of these innovations by mobilizing legacy applications and pushing more capabilities to the edge of the enterprise.

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 820 processor and Zeroth platform, which will start shipping in the second half of 2015, is the first mobile processor to have advanced cognitive computing capabilities to enhance the user experience. According to the company, the platform will deliver intuitive, next generation enhancements, including:

Visual Perception – Devices that can take higher quality photos and videos and make searching your content easier, enabled by computer vision, on-device deep learning and smart cameras that can recognize scenes, objects, and read text and handwriting.

Intelligent Connectivity – Devices that can provide the fastest connectivity through autonomous optimization and seamless service across the latest and most advanced LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies.

Intuitive Security – Devices that can be more secure by using advanced behavioral analysis to detect and protect against new malware and provide more advanced user authentication.

Always-on awareness – Devices that can anticipate user needs by always being aware of their surroundings through an integrated always-on sensor engine, sensor fusion and machine learning and classification algorithms.

Immersive multimedia – More immersive audio and visual user experiences, such as dynamic audio that can adapt surround sound based on head movement and facial recognition.

Speech and audio recognition – Devices that can learn and take instant actions by recognizing environmental sounds, music and speech through always-on listening, sound localization, sound identification and natural language processing.

Wearables were a highly active category at Mobile World Congress. Watches in particular dominated the wearable landscape and included:

Hauwei Watch

LG Watch Urbane LTE (not currently available in the US)

Pebble Time / Pebble Time Steel

While the growth in these new devices is compelling for the consumer, the quest many is; where do they fit in the enterprise? Fortunately, many of the app providers that support the enterprise are jumping onboard the Wearable bandwagon. Salesforce.com, as an example, announced the Salesforce Wear Dev Pack which is a collection of open-source starter apps that enables the enterprise to design and build wearable apps that connect to the Salesforce.com platform. Salesforce Wear supports Android Wear, Apple Watchkit and the Swift programming language, Samsung Gear 2, Pebble and a host of visual wearables.

Wearables hold the promise of compliance with the growing number hands-free regulations as well as specific applications for field force productivity and efficiency.

Mobile Enterprise Governance Needs to Keep-Up

The speed of change in the industry poses a significant challenge for the enterprise attempting to keep-up with the latest industry innovations and deciding when and how to incorporate new capabilities into enterprise applications. It is more important than ever to make sure your enterprise has a mobile technology roadmap and a center of excellence to take advantage of industry innovations and monitor the next generation. While challenging, it is critical to keep-up with the incredible speed of change in the industry because your competitors’ could be taking advantage of innovations that will help them surpass you in the market.

What’s Next? 5G of Course!

A think tank comprised of wireless experts kicked-off discussions on what the fifth generation of networks will deliver that the current fourth generation doesn’t provide. The group anticipates technical standards in place to promote a launch in conjunction with the 2020 Olympics. What can we expect from 5G network technology? Here’s a list of what’s expected:

Equipment manufacturers are already working on new innovations that will be incorporated into the next generation of networks. With the explosive growth of IoT, network capacity will certainly be tested by the billions of devices that will be connecting to these networks.

For the enterprise, 5G brings the promise of greater data capabilities. With larger screens, storage and processing capabilities, today’s generation of Smartphones are already driving wireless data consumption, per employee, through the roof. It is imperative that IT organizations are equipped to effectively manage data utilization and the associated costs now and when the next generation of wireless networks is deployed. For more information visit http://www.ovationwireless.com/optimize/data-optimization/.